PEKIN — Police were close to arresting a young man for burglarizing the Dairy Queen restaurant in Creve Coeur when he repeated the crime last spring. He served 73 days in jail awaiting prosecution for the crimes.

They produced a two-year probation term but no further time in custody for Jeffrey Hammer, 19, who pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of burglary.

Hammer, a former Creve Coeur resident who now lists a Peoria address, left solid evidence of his guilt the first time he broke into the restaurant at 624 Main St. on March 12. Shards of broken glass were stained with blood that, through DNA tests conducted at the Illinois State Police Crime Lab in Morton, matched a DNA sample taken from Hammer after his arrest in late April.

By then, Hammer had again broken into the restaurant where he had once worked. By that April 15 burglary, the restaurant was equipped with a security camera that recorded video of the burglar at work.

To avoid leaving telltale shoe prints, Hammer in his second burglary took his sneakers off before entering the restaurant through its back door and walked barefoot to a safe from which he took $1,100, according to a prosecutor’s court affidavit. The video revealed the burglar wore a black sweatshirt with gray sleeves.

The day after the burglary, Hammer was arrested for a traffic violation in East Peoria. He posted $177 in cash bond after a night in jail and paid $120, also in cash, to retrieve his towed car. Unemployed, Hammer said he’d been given the money by a friend he knew only by his first name, the affidavit stated.

He was stopped again a short time after reclaiming his car. Inside it, police found a sweatshirt like the one the burglar wore two days earlier, as well as a pry bar and a screwdriver, according to the affidavit.

Hammer also wore that same sweatshirt when detectives saw him standing near the Dairy Queen as they collected evidence from the first burglary, the affidavit stated. At that time he was wearing a bandage over a cut on his hand.

He was sentenced to 146 days in jail in addition to his probation term, but was given day-for-day credit for the 73 days he’d spent in custody since his arrest.